Film Review
Arnaud des Pallières evokes the unmistakable sense of an impending Apocalypse
in his latest film, a dreamlike noir-style thriller based on John
Cheever's 1969 novel
Bullet Park.
Cheever's bleakly cynical assault on the emptiness of the American
dream is frighteningly relevant for our own time, where the gulf
between the haves and the have nots grows incessantly and personal
happiness for individuals in all parts of the social spectrum appears
to be on a constant downward trajectory. With the flair for
experimentation and provocation that he displayed in his first two
films -
Drancy avenir (1996)
and
Adieu (2004), two
thought-provoking portraits of France's ill-treatment of immigrants and
racial minorities - Des Pallières takes Cheever's complex modern
novel and reworks it into a disturbing personal commentary on the
hopelessly fractured society we have created for ourselves.
Parc is a film which cannot
fail to provoke a strong reaction. It is a film you will either
love or hate. It is not one that will leave you
indifferent. Nor is it a film that is easy to watch. With
its constantly shifting point-of-view, wildly non-linear narrative
structure and occasional tendency to linger in vague abstraction for
what seems an eternity,
Parc
is both a challenge and an enigma. If you are not instantly
scared off by it, the likelihood is that you will find it inordinately
compelling, for it is surely one of the strangest films to have been
unleashed on a paying cinema audience in years. If you could take
the weirder aspects of the cinema of David Lynch, Alain Resnais,
Michael Haneke and Jean-Luc Godard, distil this unholy broth and make a
film from the residue, the result would probably look something like
Parc, Arnaud des Pallières's
most bizarrely brilliant film to date.
Watching
Parc is probably the
closest you can get to experiencing a nightmare whilst conscious.
Des Pallières's stark visual and aural compositions have a
hypnotic effect that no spectator can resist, one that can only lure
you into its darkly oppressive, labyrinthine dreamscape. But, try
as you might, it is impossible to make any real sense of the film until
you have watched it in its entirety, and even then you need to exert
considerable intellectual strain to draw something tangibly meaningful
from the metaphorical potpourri that Des Pallières kicks into
our eyes. The fragmented nature of the film is the main clue to
what it is about - the disintegration of society and individuals that
inevitably comes in a world where the pursuit of individualist goals
take precedence over everything else.
Parc offers both a disturbing
reminder of where we are now in the supposedly rich capitalist West (a
society divided by wealth and status) and a terrifying warning of the
horrors that are to come (complete, irreversible social breakdown)
unless we change our ways and embrace a more holistic social model, one
which draws together rather than constantly drives apart the various
strata of our society.
The film revolves around two characters who are superficially quite
similar but who could not be more different. They are Clou and
Marteau, the former a successful businessman, the latter a bored
spoiled playboy, played respectively by Sergi López and
Jean-Marc Barr (excellent casting in both cases). As their names
humorously imply (clou and marteau being respectively the French words
for nail and hammer), the two men have a natural affinity for one
another. Marteau gratifies Clou's social-climbing aspirations;
Clou provides Marteau with an easy victim so that he can make a
misguided political point. It is a perfectly symbiotic
relationship: every hammer needs a nail, and vice versa.
From the outset we know that Marteau is the main threat to Clou's ideal
world, but he is by no means the only threat.
In one significant scene, Clou watches, in increasing distress, a
television news report of riots taking place in Paris (possibly the
horrific riots of autumn 2005). For all his hard-earned
success, Clou has become no more than a prisoner in his gated Riviera
sanctuary, whilst the world around him burns. Not only is he cut
off from the outside world, he is unable to connect with his teenage
son, who seems to be living on another planet even though they share
the same house. Clou's success has only brought him physical and
emotional isolation. His wealth does not bring him happiness,
just an increasing awareness of his detachment from the rest of the
world. His one consolation is that he is safe within the confines
of his gated Garden of Eden. No harm can reach him or his
family. Or so he thinks.
Marteau is the serpent that has sneaked its way unseen into Clou's
verdant paradise and is preparing to sting him where it hurts
most. Who would think that the well-heeled, well-spoken Monsieur
Marteau is a totally unhinged psychopath, whose next project is a spot
of do-it-yourself crucifixion intended to put the middle-classes back
in their place? Clou is so preoccupied with sucking up to his
posh neighbour that he fails to see that he poses far more of a threat
to his cosy little world than any number of car-burning rioters on the
streets of Paris. Clou has good reason to be afraid, but, like
most others of his class, he is afraid of the wrong thing.
Instead of looking over the parapet for the imagined armies of
anarchists intent on burning down his castle, the clueless Clou should
look nearer to home. The greatest enemy of all is the enemy
within. The vision that Arnaud des Pallières offers us in
his devastatingly topical third feature is one that can hardly fail to
chill the blood. It is a vision of a society that is on the brink
of imploding, a social Armageddon caused by a failure of individuals to
connect with one another and to realise that the well-being of society
as a whole is an absolute prerequisite for the well-being of the
individual. There are no short-cuts to happiness. The Paris
riots of 2005 and the summer looting spree that took place in the UK in
2011 may be unrelated one-off occurrences, or they may be the overture
to the nightmare that is yet to befall us.
© James Travers 2012
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